cigar makers, and book binders. In New York there was in 1835 a Female
Union Association, in Baltimore a United Seamstresses' Society, and in
Philadelphia probably the first federation of women workers in this
country. In Lynn, Massachusetts, a "Female Society of Lynn and Vicinity
for the Protection and Promotion of Female Industry" operated during
1833 and 1834 among the shoe binders and had at one time 1000 members,
who, like the seamstresses, were home workers and earned scanty wages.

Where nearly every trade was in motion, it did not take long to discover
a common direction and a common purpose. This was expressed in city
"trades' unions," or federations of all organized trades in a city, and
in its ascendency over the individual trade societies.

The first trades' union was organized August 14, 1833, in New York.
Baltimore followed in September, Philadelphia in November, and Boston in
March 1834. New York after 1820 was the metropolis of the country and
also the largest industrial and commercial center. There the house
carpenters had struck for higher wages in the latter part of May 1833,
and fifteen other trades met and pledged their support. Out of this grew
the New York Trades' Union. It had an official organ in a weekly, the
_National Trades' Union_, published from 1834 to 1836, and a daily, _The
Union_, issued in 1836. Ely Moore, a printer, was made president. Moore
was elected a few months later as the first representative of labor in
Congress.

In addition, trades' unions were organized in Washington; in New
Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey; in Albany, Troy, and Schenectady, New
York; and in the "Far West"--Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville.

Except in Boston, the trades' unions felt anxious to draw the line